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> Wow, the astroturfing in this thread already is happening.

The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like that without evidence. Why? Because internet users routinely make these accusations up based on nothing more than seeing a few things (or just one thing) they happen not to like. There's nearly never anything more to it than that, therefore (a) it's off-topic here unless there's something objective to go on; and (b) if there is something objective to go on, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can specifically look into it.

Please review the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

There's years worth of explanation about this at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants more.

> If you are a tourist in most countries and "fly" back home, you are judgement proof. There only liability is the guests airbnb account, which, is worthless. You can create new accounts, and in most places you can use alternative government identification to bypass previous bans.

This isn't necessarily true. If you fly the coop, you might be out of the reach of a host or local law enforcement, but in some places action could still be taken against you in your absence. While for all practical purposes, you might never have to face the consequences if you never plan to return unless you were accused of doing something really terrible (like murdering or seriously injuring someone), it's best not to get yourself into legal entanglements in foreign countries, whether criminal or civil. Especially if you do think you might want to visit again in the future.

Also, AirBnB has taken legal action against guests itself[1], so that's potentially a risk in some cases too.

One of the best ways to avoid finding yourself in precarious situations while traveling abroad is to stay in legal accommodations, be they licensed hotels, hostels, homestays, etc. It's also one of the best things you can do to respect the places you visit. AirBnB is a horrible company that has single-handedly ruined buildings and neighborhoods and even, arguably, significantly harmed many popular tourist destinations, with its inventory of frequently illegal short-term rentals.

[1] https://sfist.com/2021/08/17/airbnb-is-suing-guest-who-threw...

I stayed in an Airbnb in Bangkok and in the middle of the night we found a guy under the bed. Airbnb was kind enough to refund us the replacement fee of the key we took with us as we ran for our life. Awful company.

ok you can't just say you "found a guy". was he alive? dead? a thief/perv?

The bed was probably listed as a separate budget "room" on AirBnB.

Right now I only see one positive comment in the whole thread, did you see more when you posted? I’m curious if some were deleted.

There was a weird ad-post for You.com earlier, which I mistakenly thought was organic... And now this. HN needs a bit more transparency or it’s going to lose a few of us.

I sort of glossed over that thread earlier but oh my goodness that was a trainwreck, I'm glad you mentioned it and I went back to have a look

That thread was moderated. You can tell because the founder’s opening introduction was pinned above dang pinning his own comment about a related thread. Those are conscious moderator actions which are about as transparent as it gets and illuminate the thinking on the other side (hint: you’re not aligned, but it sounds like you already expected that)

Also dang did that to the other big Show HN story yesterday: "Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer" so it seems to be a new thing he does independently of if the post is by a YC company or not.

Please don't jump to grandiose conclusions from a couple of data points from the stochastic stream. Given enough randomness (which we certainly have here), you can literally jump to any conclusion that way. This leads to false feelings of generality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

The moderation practices haven't changed here for many years. We don't publish a moderation log for a bunch of reasons*, but I'm always happy to answer any questions and usually spend hours a day doing it.

* Past explanations if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...